Happened to catch a bio of Robert Deniro recently and decided to watch The Deerhunter (1978) again. The initial Russian Roulette scene is the most intense scene i have ever seen in the movies. Apparently it was directly related to 28 deaths by Russian Roulette after those folks saw the movie. Couldnt help but wonder if any BH out there have other intense scenes that stand out? Doesnt have to be violent just personally intense?

I thought the scenes in Saving Private Ryan which showed the troops coming ashore on D-Day were extremely intense. It was impossible for me to sit still during that sequence, felt like I was in the LST and the Germans were shooting at me. My wife couldn't watch it at all, and to this day refuses to watch a rerun of the movie.I just asked her your question, she first said Alien, then mentioned Private Ryan. I'd add Alien to my list, I was on edge the entire movie.

gatorman wrote:I thought the scenes in Saving Private Ryan which showed the troops coming ashore on D-Day were extremely intense. It was impossible for me to sit still during that sequence, felt like I was in the LST and the Germans were shooting at me. My wife couldn't watch it at all, and to this day refuses to watch a rerun of the movie.I just asked her your question, she first said Alien, then mentioned Private Ryan. I'd add Alien to my list, I was on edge the entire movie.

gatorman

Yes,agree on both counts. Alien was riveting. When i mentioned Private Ryan to a WW11 vet that i knew he said he wouldnt see it. Why i asked? As some tears rolled down his cheeks he said he thinks about the war everyday. He said he was at the Battle of the Bulge and so close to the Germans that they couldnt look out of their trenches. So they threw handgrenades at each other all night. In the morning the Germans were all dead. The reason? Their handgrenades were made by slave laborers and they placed dud fuses in them. All they did was spark. I didnt bring the movie up again.

Last edited by reggiesimpson on Tue Jan 15, 2013 7:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Calm Man wrote:You nailed it reggie. The Deerhunter scenes were riveting and horrifying. That is my favorite move of all time.

My wife and i went back to the same theater the following week after seeing Deerhunter to see some romantic film. Deerhunter was still playing. This was at one of the first "multiplex" theaters. As her movie was rather slow i slipped out for a cup of coffee with every intention of slipping into The Deerhunter to try and catch that scene again. Sure enough it was about to play. The theater was packed so i just stood in the back and watched the audience and the movie. When Deniro deals the fateful shot a young man in the front row of the theater leaped in the air with his arms over his head and yelled............. "kill that f*****g gook". Everyone was stunned by the intensity of that scene........and that young man.

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I was 6 or so watching a murder mystery with my family at a theater. I never forgot the person hanging in the bathroom window. For almost 60 years now, I still think about that scene when I enter any restroom and with a window. I later learned that it was George Raft who played an LAPD detective.

Use the talents you possess, for the woods would be a very silent place if no birds sang except the best. -Henry van Dyke, poet (1852-1933)

The phone-ring scene and the climax of Audition ("kiri kiri kiri").There's couple of biggies in Irreversible.Does almost throwing up during Base Moi count as intense?

None of these would be something I'd recommend to the unprepared. Heck, sometimes people react differently than you'd expect--I was shocked that a coworker couldn't handle the gas-station bit of one of the 5 of the Cremaster Series, considering how much we'd already gotten through of weird art confusion.

I guess those are the things that pop into my head when someone says 'intense'. The sort of thing Antonin Artaud would be pleased with...where you go to the theatre with the same sort of trepedation-but-it's-good-for-you feeling that you have when you go to the dentist.

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The sewer system is a form of welfare state.
| -- "Libra", Don DeLillo

Toons wrote:Linda Blair's head doing a 360 degree rotation in the Exorcist

I remember the stories about people going crazy seeing this.We were going somewhere else when my dad, “all of a sudden” decided to stop in the theater.(he didn’t want to give me the chance to back out)I knew he would be ribbing me the rest of my life if I couldn’t take it.

When the movie started, the screen went bright red, and the Warner Brothers logo came on,that’s when I was most scared, as I knew I was “stuck.”

Saw Hopper interviewed on Actors Studio and that scene was brought up by a black audience member. Asking if it were really true Hopper said yes and that Tarantino had done the historical research to prove it.

That gets my vote. The score using Green Leaves of Summer was brilliant, too.

I don't appreciate gore- and guts-style intensity. It is something different -- it makes you squirm in your seat but doesn't really induce fear. It also seems like cheating on the filmmaker's part. If I had to pick one such squirm-inducing scene it would be the eyeball scene in Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog). I saw the whole movie 40-plus years ago and that's the only thing I remember about it, but I remember it well.

As honorable mention, I go with the strudel scene also in Inglourious Basterds. Another very subtle but nail-biting scene.

OK, the "Stuck in the Middle With You " scene in Reservoir Dogs is somewhere near the top. Apparently Tarantino is good at that kind of thing!

Agree with the intensely tender City Lights scene, the Psycho shower scene, and adding the chariot race in Ben Hur and the last scenes in The Train ('64) when a wounded and exhausted Labiche finally stops it for good, and In Cold Blood as the killers arrive at the Clutter farmhouse.

The scene in "Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan" when the snaillike creature crawls into the mens' ears. Nearly as bad was when they came out!

The scene at the end of "Dog Day Afternoon" when the cops foil the bank robbers by shooting Sonny's (Al Pacino) partner and hold a gun to Pacino's head. The look on his face as he saw his dead partner being taken away on a stretcher was very intense.